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I.e., more than their actual merits may warrant (cf. 6:160 - "Whoever shall come [before God] with a good deed will gain ten times the like thereof"). See also note [79] on 27:89 .
Paradise.
Seeing Almighty Allah in the Hereafter.
The reward of the righteous will be far more than in proportion to their merits. For they will have the supreme bliss of being near to Allah, and "seeing His face".
The face is the symbol of the Personality, the inner and real Self, which is the antithesis of the outer and ephemeral Self. It will be illuminated with Allah's Light, behind which is no shadow or darkness. All its old shortcomings will be blotted out, with their sense of shame, for there will be Perfection, as in Allah's sight.
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In contrast with the multiple "rewards" for good deeds, the recompense of evil will be only commensurate with the deed itself. (See also note [46] on the last sentence of 41:50 .)
Lit., "by a piece of the night, densely dark".
Note that the evil reward is for those who have "earned" evil, i.e., brought it on themselves by the deliberate choice of evil. Further, in the justice of Allah, they will be requited with evil similar to, and not greater in quantity or intensity, than the evil they had done,-unlike the good, who, in Allah's generosity, get a reward far greater than anything they have earned or could possibly earn.
Night is the negation of Light and metaphorically of joy and felicity. The intensive is indicated by "the depth of the darkness of Night."
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Lit., "you and those [God -]partners of yours"; cf. surah {6}, note [15]. The expression makanakum (lit., "your place", i.e., "keep to your place") bears a connotation of contempt and an implied threat.
I.e., separated those who ascribed divinity to beings other than God from the objects of their one-time adoration (Tabari, Baghawi): a metonymical phrase denoting a realization on the part of the former that there has never been any existential link between them and those false objects of worship (cf. 6:24 , 10:30 , 11:21 , 16:87 and 28:75 - "and all their false imagery has [or "will have"] forsaken them"). See also the next two notes.
I.e., "it was only your own fancies and desires that you worshipped, clothing them in the garb of extraneous beings": in other words, the worship of idols, forces of nature, saints, prophets, angels, etc., is shown here to be nothing but a projection of the worshipper's own subconscious desires. (Cf. also 34:41 and the corresponding note [52].)
The false gods are not real: they are only the figments of the imaginations of those who indulged in the false worship. But the prophets or great or good men whose names were vainly taken in competition with the name of Allah, and the personified Ideas or Idols treated in the same way would themselves protest against their names being used in that way, and show that the worship was paid not to them, but to the ignorance or superstition or selfish lusts of the false worshippers.
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Thus the Qur'an makes it clear that the saints and prophets who, after their death, have been unwarrantably deified by their followers shall not be held accountable for the blasphemous worship accorded to them (cf. {5:116-117}); furthermore, even the inanimate objects of false worship will symbolically deny any connection between themselves and their worshippers.
See last note. They did not even know that they were being falsely worshipped in that way.
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I.e., will be brought back to the realization of God's oneness, uniqueness and almightiness - that instinctive cognition which has been implanted in human nature as such (see 7:172 ).
Cf. ii. 95, where the verb used is qaddama. The verb aslafa, used here, is nearly synonymous.
Instead of their false ideas helping them, they will desert them and leave them in the lurch. Cf. vi. 24.
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The term rizq ("provision of sustenance") is used here in both the physical and spiritual connotations of this word, which explains the reference to "heaven and earth" and, subsequently, "[man's] hearing and sight".
The people referred to here are those who believe, firstly, that there are beings endowed with certain divine or semi-divine qualities, thus having, as it were, a "share" in God's divinity; and, secondly, that by worshipping such beings men can come closer to God. This idea obviously presupposes belief in God's existence, as is brought out in the "answer" of the people thus addressed (cf. 7:172 and the corresponding note [139]); but inasmuch as it offends against the concept of God's oneness and uniqueness, it deprives those people's belief in God of its true meaning and spiritual value.
Sustenance may be understood in the sense of all the provision necessary for maintaining physical life as well as mental and spiritual development and well-being. Examples of the former are light and rain from heaven and the produce of the earth and facilities of movement on land and sea and in air. Examples of the latter are the moral and spiritual influences that come from our fellow-men, and from the great Teachers and Prophets.
Just two of our ordinary faculties, hearing and sight, are mentioned, as examples of the rest. All the gifts of Allah, physical and spiritual, are enjoyed and incorporated by us by means of the faculties and capacities with which He has endowed us.
Cf. iii. 27 and n. 371; vi. 95 and n. 920; and xxx. 19.
This is the general summing-up of the argument. The government of the whole Creation and its maintenance and sustenance is in the hands of Allah. How futile then would it be to neglect His true worship and go after false gods?
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Lit., "this [or "such"], then, being God, your Sustainer, the Ultimate Truth" - i.e., "seeing that, on your own admission, He is the One who creates and governs all things and is the Ultimate Reality behind all that exists" (see surah {20}, note [99]): which implies a categorical denial of the possibility that any other being could have a share, however small, in His divinity.
Lit., "How, then, are you turned away?" - i.e., from the truth.
The wonderful handiwork and wisdom of Allah having been referred to, as the real Truth, as against the false worship and false gods that men set up, it follows that to disregard the Truth must lead us into woeful wrong, not only in our beliefs but in our conduct. We shall err and stray and be lost. How then can we turn away from the Truth?
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See surah {2}, note [7], as well as 8:55 and the corresponding note [58]. In this particular context, "the Sustainer's word" seems to be synonymous with "the way of God" (sunnat Allah) concerning deliberate sinners and deniers of the truth (Manar XI, 359). The particle anna in annahum (lit., "that they") is, thus, indicative of the purport of the divine "word" referred to, and is best expressed by a colon.
Disobedience to Allah brings its own terrible consequences on ourselves. The Law, the Word, the Decree, of Allah must be fulfilled. If we go to false gods, our Faith will be dimmed, and then extinguished. Our spiritual faculties will be dead.
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This rhetorical question is connected with the false belief that those idolatrously worshipped beings are no more than "intercessors" between their followers and God (see verse {18} above): and so, even their misguided votaries cannot possibly attribute to them the power to create and to resurrect. See also note [8] on verse {4} of this surah. In its wider sense, this question (and the subsequent answer) relates to the God-willed, cyclic process of birth, death and regeneration evident in all organic nature.
See surah {5}, note [90].
The argument is now turned in another direction. The false gods can neither create out of nothing nor sustain the creative energy which maintains the world. Nor can they give any guidance which can be of use for the future destiny of mankind: on the contrary they themselves (assuming they were men who were deified) stand in need of such guidance. Why then follow vain fancies, instead of going to the source of all knowledge, truth, and guidance, and worship, serve, and obey Allah, the One True God?
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Since the concept of "finding the right way" cannot apply to lifeless idols and idolatrous images, the above passage obviously relates to animate beings - whether dead or alive - to whom "a share in God's divinity" is falsely attributed: that is, to saintly personalities, prophets or angels whom popular fancy blasphemously endows with some or all of God's qualities, sometimes even to the extent that they are regarded as a manifestation or incarnation of God on earth. As for the act of God's guidance, it is displayed, primarily, in the power of conscious reasoning as well as of instinctive insight with which He has graced man, thus enabling him to follow the divine laws of right conduct (Zamakhshari).
Lit., "[and] how do you judge?"
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Lit., "conjecture can in no wise make [anyone] independent (la yughni) of the truth", i.e., of positive insight obtained through authentic revelation (to which the sequence relates). The people referred to here (and apparently also in the first sentence of verse {53} of this surah) are the agnostics who waver between truth and falsehood. - Some of the great exponents of Islamic Law - foremost among them Ibn Hazm - base on this verse their rejection of qiyas ("deduction by analogy") as a means of eliciting religious laws which are supposedly "implied" in the wording of the Qur'an or of the Prophet's teachings, but not clearly laid down in terms of law. In his commentary on this verse, Razi thus sums up the above view: "They say that every deduction by analogy is a conjectural process and is, therefore, of necessity, inadmissible [in matters pertaining to religion] - for 'conjecture can never be a substitute for truth'." (See also {5:101-102}, and the corresponding notes [120-123].)
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Lit., "but" (wa-lakin) - a stress on the impossibility of any assertion to the contrary.
The above passage has a twofold significance: firstly, the wisdom inherent in the Qur'an precludes any possibility of its having been composed by a human being; and, secondly, the Qur'anic message is meant to confirm, and give a final formulation to, the eternal truths which have been conveyed to man through a long succession of prophets: truths which have subsequently been obscured through wrong interpretation, deliberate omissions or interpolations, or a partial or even total loss of the original texts. For an explanation of the phrase ma bayna yadayhi, rendered by me in this context as "whatever there still remains [of earlier revelations]", see surah {3}, note [3].
The Book: Cf. iii. 23 and n. 366. Allah's revelation throughout the ages is one. The Qur-an confirms, fulfils, completes, and further explains the one true revelation, which has been sent by the One True God in all ages.
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According to the great philologist Abu 'Ubaydah Ma'mar ibn al-Muthanna (as quoted by Baghawi), the particle am which introduces this sentence has no interrogative connotation, but is - as in several other places in the Qur'an - synonymous with the conjunction wa ("and"), which in this case can be suitably rendered as above.
Cf. 2:23 and the corresponding note [15].
The Prophet (ﷺ).
Cf. ii. 23 and n. 42.
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Lit., "the knowledge whereof they do not encompass, while its inner meaning has not yet come to them". Most of the classical commentators explain this sentence in the way rendered by me, some of them, however (e.g., Tabari and Baghawi), interpret the term ta'wil ("final [or "inner"] meaning") in the sense in which it is used in 7:53 (see my translation of that passage and the corresponding note [41]).
Taawil: elucidation, explanation, final fulfilment, Cf. vii. 53, The Message of Allah not only gives us rules for our every-day conduct, but speaks of high matters of religious significance, which require elucidation in two ways: (1) by experience from the actual facts of life, and (2) by the final fulfilment of the hopes and warnings which we now take on trust through our Faith. The Unbelievers reject Allah's Message simply because they cannot understand it and without giving it even a chance of elucidation in any of these ways.
Wrong-doers always came to grief ultimately. The true course of history shows it from a broad standpoint. But they are so headstrong that they prejudge issues in their ignorance before they are decided.
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The verb yu'minun, which occurs twice in this verse, can be understood as connoting either the present tense - "[such as] believe", resp. "[such as] do not believe" - or the future tense. The future tense (adopted by me) is the meaning unequivocally attributed to it by Tabari and Ibn Kathir; some of the other authorities, like Zamakhshari and Razi, prefer the present tense, but nevertheless regard the other interpretation as legitimate. (See also Mandr XI, 380.)
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